It's the First Day of School...Forever!

May 23, 2011
Blending comedy with his trademark brand of bestselling horror, Stine's take on a Groundhog Dayâstyle premise stars a fifth grader stuck reliving his disastrous first day at a new school. Arriving at school with syrup in his hair and the front of his jeans soaked, Artie discovers he's been followed by his dog, who tears the principal's suit. Like falling dominoes, a sequence of debacles follows: Artie hits a popular boy with a baseball (and later causes him to fall and break his leg), lets the valuable class scorpion escape, has a spaghetti-related accident at lunch, and wanders into the girls' bathroom. There's some expected repetition as Artie's day replays, but Stine's embellishmentsâincluding plenty of chapter cliffhangers and a twist endingâkeep things wickedly funny (Artie is a ready source of quips and one-liners) and increasingly ghoulish (on the second go-round, the dog bites the principal's hand; later, he bites the hand off). After bearing witness to the injuries, humiliations, and terrors that Artie faces, even readers' toughest days at school will feel like a breeze. Ages 9â12.

June 1, 2011

A preteen horror take on Groundhog Day.

Artie's first day at Ardmore Middle School starts off badly: Before he even leaves the house he's fallen out of bed, zapped himself plugging in the cellphone charger and been squirted with syrup by his little brother. It gets so radically worse that by the afternoon he's received the dismaying news that a gang has been dispatched to beat him up on the way home at the Principal's request. Before that can happen, to his astonishment, he's suddenly waking up in bed. Was it a dream? Hard to say, because again he falls out of bed, zaps himself, gets squirted and goes on to another first day that is nearly the same but even more disastrous. And then again. Each round gets shorter but weirder as Artie's struggles to head off catastrophes he knows are coming lead to bizarre accidents, wild chases, scary discoveries in the school's dank, dark basement and, at last, a truly memorable encounter with an oversized custodian who disintegrates into a pack of weasels. After that, it's almost a letdown when Stine explains Artie's misadventures with a logical and obvious revelation.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from August 1, 2011

Gr 3-5-Artie Howard experiences the worst first day of school ever as a new fifth grader at Ardmore Middle School. He hits his head when he falls out of bed in the morning, gets electrocuted, has syrup splashed all over his shirt and hair, his dog bites the pocket of his principal's blazer, he kills his class's pet scorpion, he makes enemies with the most popular guy at school, and he discovers weird happenings in the basement book room. And that's only half of it! To make matters worse, when Artie wakes up the next morning, he is doomed to repeat his first day of school all over again, and each iteration is more bizarre than the last. As usual, Stine delivers the hilarity and horror that readers love, and his mastery of sustaining mood will not disappoint. The humor and descriptive first, first day of school allow for faster pacing in the subsequent days, and kids will love the twist at the end.-Adrienne L. Strock, Maricopa County Library District, AZ

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011
Grades 4-6 Artie thinks he is ready to start middle school, but on the first day, he conks his head, angers the principal, injures the star athlete, and sets loose a classroom scorpion, among other disasters. For the next several days, he relives these events, and things grow worse until he encounters corpses rising from their graves in the school's basement. Stine seems to pull a clich'd ending: the whole string of nightmarish scenarios appears to be a series of weird dreams resulting from gas at the dentist, but a final, fresh twist with a video game will make readers revisit the events. As usual, Stine takes the normal anxieties of childhoodin this case, the first day at a new schooland blends exaggerated humor with a few equally exaggerated moments of horror in a fast and goofy romp. Lots of fun for Stine fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)